Assessing Learning with Discovery Education

The Kansas DE Leadership Council has been asked to participate in the 2009 KSDE Fall Assessment Conference on October 27, 2009 in Topeka, Kansas. Mary Frazier, Dan Brown, Dean Mantz of the KS LC along with Andrew Walls from Discovery Eduction Assessment Team will be the presenters. All sessions are geared towards the use of Discovery Education products to enrich classroom instruction while addressing state standards. Activities and lessons shared also focus on differentiated instruction methods that assist in improving student learning as well as assessment scores.

Provided the Internet is cooperating, we will look to stream each session on uStream. If we can not stream please visit the “Cover It Live” page of our wiki and follow along. See you in Topeka!

Discovery’s Quiz Builder, Assignment Builder and the Writing Prompt Builder are the building blocks for differentiated instruction and visual literacy your classroom. The Teacher Center has many tools that will also engage students and enhance their learning. A quick overview of downloading videos, video segments, and student and teacher materials will be provided. You’ll see how to search for videos according to Kansas Standards.

We will demonstrate how an elementary classroom in Abilene uses DE Science. Students become experts in an area of Science by using DE Science. Next, they create a study guide. Finally their peers must complete the study guide by visiting and learning from the DE Science Unit. Students feel empowered while creating the study guide. They decide what is important for their peers to learn from the unit. Classmates enjoy completing the study guide by exploring media files on DE Science. Learning is a lot of fun using DE Science.

Progress Zone allows educators to create, share, and administer custom diagnostic probes using a bank of more than 50,000 unique assessment items. It is the first web-based formative assessment service that recommends standards-aligned video clips for targeted remediation. Monitor student progress throughout the year with teacher-created diagnostic probes tied to your state’s curriculum standards and automatically linked to appropriate, fun, and engaging Discovery Education streaming video clips.Progress Zone empowers teachers to impact student achievement through the use of research-based tools that monitor what students are learning, identify concepts that may need additional attention, and provide digital media that helps educators improve student understanding through the power of visual learning.

2:30 – 3:15 “Amazing Makeover” by Dean Mantz – USD #376 Sterling

We will provide an overview of all the newly developed “treasures” for educators that is available at www.discoveryeducation.com which does not even take a login for access. After introducing those features we will strengthen your ability to successfully integrate Discovery Education Streaming by covering the “Amazing Makeover” that took place this summer. Some of the new enhancements include: grid view results, short video previews, Web 2.0 sharing, and best of all global classroom management.